2 - Magistrates and records

Summary

Things are done according to how they are reported.

- Conrad Ischinger, 1844

Various officials from the village and the region appear throughout this book. Villages in Württemberg developed a great deal of self-administration and, as we shall see, generated mountains of paper. At the head of the local magistrates was the Schultheiβ, who joined the pastor in deliberating many questions or in holding proceedings which had to do with religion or morals to compose the gemeinsamen Unteramt (joint lower bureau). The Schultheiss was responsible for directing all of the official business and for convening the deliberating and judicial bodies of the village. In Neckarhausen, he usually also held the office of Schreiber (clerk) and was responsible for keeping minutes – or protocols – of court sessions and the like. Various passages in the legal code and administrative revisions in the decade or so after the founding of the kingdom (1803) make it clear that many villages had no competent Schreiber and had to call on someone from the clerk's office in the district administrative center. But in Neckarhausen, there is evidence that at least by the mid-eighteenth century, the top officials could keep some of their own records, although the local excise officer had to make do with tokens. But there was still a sharp division between those records which the village officers could maintain and those which had to be written by the Amtschreiber (county clerk) or his Substitut (under clerk).

The other chief official of the village was the Börgermeister, who was responsible for the financial administration.